{"id":209,"date":"2005-10-31T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techory.com\/blog\/?p=209"},"modified":"2008-05-23T11:32:20","modified_gmt":"2008-05-23T18:32:20","slug":"jons-htpc-dvd-catalog-a-quick-note-on-audio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/jons-htpc-dvd-catalog-a-quick-note-on-audio\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon’s HTPC: DVD Catalog & A Quick Note on Audio"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Part of Jon’s HTPC setup. For more, see: Introduction and Table of Contents<\/a><\/em>
\n
\nDVD Catalog:<\/strong>
\n\"DVD<\/a>Meedio also allows me to have a searchable catalog of all our DVD movies. You can search alphabetically, by genre, by studio, by rating, by actor, or by director. All movies have front and back cover art, a description, rating, run time, and other information. I use a piece of software called \u201cDVD Profiler\u201d integrated with Meedio to accomplish this. Currently it\u2019s simply a catalog that you can search through to pick a movie; selecting the movie doesn\u2019t actually play it on demand. However if I wanted to put my entire DVD collection on the hard drive I could then have them launch by selecting it. I just don\u2019t have enough hard drive space to store all of our movies. Currently we just browse the catalog until we find something we are in the mood for, and then pull it our of the big DVD wallet.<\/p>\n

DVD Profiler software\u2026
\nhttp:\/\/www.intervocative.com\/dvdpro\/Info.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

A Quick Note On Audio:<\/strong>
\nWindows uses something called the \u201ckmixer\u201d for all directsound and waveout audio (pretty much 100% of the audio on a normal system). Kmixer is BAD… very bad. It forces re-samples (a.k.a. mangles) all the audio that goes through it. That means if you have a 192\/24 sound card like the Audigy 2 ZS, you are not actually getting 192\/24 sound. The same is also true for 44\/16 CD audio. The only way to get around the Windows mangler (kmixer) is to find programs that allow you to use either an ASIO connection to your soundcard, or \u201cKernel Streaming\u201d, or a SPDIF connection to your soundcard (that might look like a typo, but I\u2019m referring to a software SPDIF connection to your soundcard, not a wired SPDIF connection from the soundcard to the receiver). How you connect the soundcard to your stereo is up to you, personally I use Monster analog connections because 192\/24 won\u2019t fit through a SPDIF cable. But regardless, in order to bypass the mangeler the connection from the software to the soundcard needs to be ASIO, SPDIF, or Kernel Streaming. Most DVD playback software has the ability to use SPDIF, so no problem for DVD\u2019s. However it can be a bit harder to find music playback software that supports ASIO or Kernel Streaming. Luckily, Meedio supports ASIO playback, so your MP3\u2019s, WAV\u2019s, and CD\u2019s will sound like they are supposed to. Another nice feature, so no worries there.<\/p>\n

The more MP3\u2019s you have, the bigger the need for quality organization. That means that all your ID3v2 tags need to be correct. There is simply no automated way to do this. Like I said earlier, I use EAC and LAME to rip everything. EAC has (like a lot of programs) and automated CD information finder thing, but in reality that\u2019s only a starting point. For example, one CD might come up as \u201cElwood \u2013 Parlance of Our Time\u201d and another might come up \u201cBeatles, Abby Road\u201d. As you can see, the titles might be correct but the formatting is different. Also, many times the track numbering is 1,2,3 on one CD and 01,02,03 on another, and 01\/14, 02\/14, 03\/14 on yet another. So again, things don\u2019t match. Often times the CD release date is empty or wrong, and yada yada. To make it even worse, Various Artist CD\u2019s are a headache in themselves. I highly recommend \u201cThe Godfather\u201d for editing your tags so everything is nice and formatted correctly. I previously used Mp3tag (for a long time), but then switched to The Godfather. It\u2019s not as friendly to use as Mp3tag, but it\u2019s more powerful. Regardless of what software you use, there\u2019s no automated way to do it; it\u2019s simply a mind numbing CD-by-CD process. However, The Godfather helps to make it as easy as it can be. A big advantage to The Godfather is that it supports custom VBScripts to help speed things up. My collection took months to make corrections and format everything. But now that they are all correct, it\u2019s easy to maintain new CD\u2019s as they come in. The Godfather (using a VBScript) can also be used to embed the cover art into the MP3 file. Some programs require the cover art to be embedded in order to properly view it.<\/p>\n

Bad kmixer! Bad!\u2026 (this is just one result from a Google search)
\nhttp:\/\/www6.head-fi.org\/forums\/showthread.php?t=77185<\/a><\/p>\n

Software SPDIF vs SPDIF cable discussion\u2026 (the explanation is 5 posts down)
\nhttp:\/\/www.meedio.com\/forum\/ptopic25667.html<\/a><\/p>\n

EAC software\u2026
\nhttp:\/\/www.exactaudiocopy.de\/<\/a><\/p>\n

LAME encoder\u2026
\nhttp:\/\/lame.sourceforge.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The Godfather software\u2026 (I can\u2019t seem to find the homepage. Here\u2019s a screenshot)
\nhttp:\/\/www.snapfiles.com\/screenshots\/godfather.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Next Chapter> Home Automation (the best for last)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Part of Jon’s HTPC setup. For more, see: Introduction and Table of Contents DVD Catalog: Meedio also allows me to have a searchable catalog of all our DVD movies. You can search alphabetically, by genre, by studio, by rating, by actor, or by director. All movies have front and back cover art, a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment-pc","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}